Found
by FrankandJoe3
Summary: Sequel to the Children of the Lost series, Frank goes missing for a year and when he's found, Joe's in for a heartbreak with what's waiting for him in the hospital room.


**As implied by the username, I've been a big fan of the Hardy Boys ever since I was eight and I started reading them. I have so much fanfiction for them piled up, but I never had the courage to post it. Now… I figure I might as well risk it. This is my version of a sequel to the Children of the Lost series, only because I haven't read it yet.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the Hardy Boys or the wonder they bestow.**

* * *

"Give it a rest, Joe," Fenton Hardy's voice brokenly echoed through the towering timbers, shivering its way through the jade and emerald tinted tree-stars that kept the sunshine from dusting across the dirt below.

Long ago, that voice had been gruff and loud with the greatest pride a retired detective who fathered two of the best agents in the world's most undercover agency known to mankind, but now, it was weaker than the knees that trembled in an effort to hold him up with his elbow hiding his face where it hit against a broad tree on the outside of the forest. He was a weak man now, as it had been for the past year, just merely a shell of the man he used to be; trapped in the carcass of a person he used to smile at in the mirror, but now only shuddered upon.

"I won't give it a rest until he's back!" came Joe's defiant cry, splitting on the pronoun for a tiny decibel.

There had been three hundred and sixty five days of this exact conversation, give or take a few weeks where his family had _forced _him to stay back at their home in Bayport, Connecticut, those several days spent venting and screaming up in his room with the door locked. He refused to attend school and he hadn't touched an ATAC assignment since his brother had been snatched out of the woods leaving nothing but a faint L-O-S-T etched into the ground.

Frank Hardy had become a household name, plastered over every News network and internet website that could help itself. A household name didn't bring him home though.

"Joe… please. Give it a rest. Let's go home," his father pleaded, cutting the younger teen's teary nostalgia-filled determination, his flashlight hovering on the denting of the leaves, the last place his brother had been seen.

The bright beam began to shiver, tremble, bounce back and forth like a gas wildly as the solids within his head heated up and became pure liquid. He couldn't cry. He couldn't cry. He was crying.

"My only home was with him," he breathed through gritted teeth, nearly screaming in rage when his phone vibrated in his pocket.

He clicked off the flashlight and poked it into his other pocket, pulling his phone up to his ear, swallowing hard so he wouldn't sound as weak as he felt.

"J-Joe Hardy," he answered the phone with his name, a habit his father had drilled into him.

He screamed.

* * *

The toes of his size ten Nikes jumped the stairs three at a time, way past the point of running, more like flying up the metallic grated material. He could've taken the elevator like his father had done, but even a second wasted on waiting yet another few breaths in waiting for this moment was something he just couldn't do.

"Please… please…" he replaced every breath with the prayer until he reached the third floor, hesitating for just a second with his eyes resting on the fifteenth room.

Behind this door was the answer to the prayers he had been uttering on knees for the longest time now, his pale hand trembling on the silver handle, breath caught hard in his throat. He found releasing it to be a lot easier than it had seemed at first, the door standing open before he could even blink. Without the darkness to hide him, his eyes immediately flew to the body half-covered by the white linen sheets.

A brunette lay there, his eyes on the TV at the other side of the room, his long lacks matted and tangled as if they hadn't been cared for in a while. His brown eyes were gleaming with innocence and happiness, his skin a dark tan and what was shown of his body covered in small little nicks from what looked like thing as simple as thorns and stray branches.

"Frank!" Joe screamed, pure relief drenching every decibel in his tone, practically glomping the now sixteen year old over the bars that separated them, hugging him to the point where he felt everything under his grasp pop.

The hug wasn't returned. In fact, the brunette stiffened and squirmed under the grasp until he was freed, meeting the blurry blue eyes with his confused brown set. He seemed bothered until that mask seemed to shatter and he laughed warmly, giving his brother just the faintest hope that maybe he had managed to keep a hold on his memories unlike Justin.

"They told me a blonde nurse downstairs had the hots for me; I just kind of hoped it was Chloe," he grinned, his lips stretching up to the point it squinted his eyes, the light playing off as a reflection in his them blinding him from seeing how broken that phrase left the fifteen year old.

Joe took a weak step back, his eyebrows furrowing hard, his lips parting in a look that could easily be the lovechild of horror and agony. Frank didn't seem to notice it, stretching his arms high above his head until the toned shoulders gave a refreshing pop, easing a happy sigh from his lips.

"Listen babe, I'm not really into guys, but if you get me out of here and get me some real food, I might make an exception," Joe nearly choked on his breath at the flirtatious tone that he didn't know his brother was even able to voice, his wink gentle and loving.

The brunette in the bed couldn't be Frank. Even if he did have amnesia, there wasn't a romantic bone in his body. He was awkward, stumbling, blushing—an idiot when it came to his stuff! When'd he get good at it?

"I'm not your nurse," Joe murmured quietly, his blinking slowing down and his breath laboring in an effort to keep his tears stifled, "And I definitely don't like you like that… Don't you remember me?"

The teen cocked his head, feet poking out the bars of the bed with the bare digits swinging idly through the cold air.

"I've only been aware of the world for an hour, guy. When I got here, they had me all drugged up to fix some stupid little cut on the back of my head that was nothing like I said…" he had a bit of an apology to his tone before something seemed to occur to him. "W-wait… I might… are you…"

He furrowed his face up, fighting to figure out what it was exactly that was stuck on the tip of his tongue until he seemed to recognize the taste, grinning a bit and making the blonde's heart skip a beat.

"You're the TV tech, right?" he must've been left deaf from the 'little cut to the back of his head' because he didn't react in the slightest to the sound of his twin's heart shattering. "All I can get on is Doctor Who right now. I'm not complaining, but it's really quiet and I can't figure out what he's doing with that light up dildo thing."

Joe bit his lip softly, shaking his head and swallowing what felt like a knot the size of his head.

"I-I'm… not… the tech," he whispered, running a hand violently up through his blonde locks, enough to make him cringe a little, a pain he needed. "My name is Joe; Joe Hardy. Does that mean anything to you?"

"Joe…" the name was repeated, like the long and confusing name of a foreign dish, tossed about and played with and manipulated until it felt like nothing coming frown the brown eyed teen's lips. "Nope. Should I?"

Joe had been suspended thousands of feet above the ground by a single cord, suspended in a burning bell tower, trapped in a cage with a hungry tiger, atop the Statue of Liberty's crown without a harness, hiding behind a single metal sheet from a barrage of starving bullets; despite all that, this was the most horrifying and painful moment he would ever remember in future days, clutching at his heart as it suddenly grew tight.

"N… no. I guess not. Maybe… Maybe I have the wrong room. Who are you?" he watched the ground, eyes blurry, knees trembling as the pain ate away at them in wanting to collapse him to the ground.

In his peripheral, he noticed his brother shrug idly.

"Well, you called me Frank, but I feel more like a Thomas… maybe a Derek. Sorry I can't be of much help. Docs' think I've got a nasty case of amnesia or something. Hope you find the guy you're looking for," he sounded so obliviously enthusiastic that Joe couldn't even manage a goodbye.

He just have a watery smile, tears hard on his gaze as he stepped just outside the door before collapsing against the wall, curling his knees up to his chest and sobbing.

Detective Cole was the last to enter the room, pulling it closed firmly behind him to ward off the reporters before pulling up a chair beside the doctor, the park ranger and the patient's father, shooting only a glance to the angsty teen laying against the wall with a forlorn expression cast over his face without need of the light's assistance.

Coincidence enough, it was him that Frank noticed first when he took his gaze from his dinner, raising his head in recognition. "Oh hey, Joe was it? Find your friend?"

Joe gritted his teeth a little bit, chest tightening, but he was decent enough to shake his head without having to take his eyes from the floor.

"Sorry about that, guy. I'm sure he'll turn up! I mean, hey, they found me didn't they?" he grinned optimistically, face furrowing up when a shuddery gasp slipped from the blonde's lips and he had to clap a hand over himself. "You okay?"

"He's fine," Fenton directed the attention from Joe, eager to have his son's eyes on him, praying for some recognition to be cast his way.

When Frank's brown eyes hit him, recognition was the last thing displayed in the tinted orbs, easily bested by the frustration that came with being told off by a stranger.

"I wasn't asking you. I was asking the kid back there who looks like he'd rather be curled up in a ball, dead! Now, hush, old man. Joe, you okay?" Frank's amount of power and lack of restraint froze the whole room, propping a few jaws open.

The blonde wiped at his eyes and started to nod before something seemed to itch beneath his skin.

"Was Einstein's theory good?" he asked quietly, baiting out an answer with the innocently broken expression he had.

It was a nice replacement for the heart-breaking rage and murder that had lined it for the past few torturous months, but it didn't hurt any less. The brunette stared in confusion, eyebrows furrowed, wondering why the teen seemed to be so desperately praying.

"… Relatively," he seemed to remember, saying it like a question as if he was afraid of it being wrong. **[1]**

That hesitance, that fear in being inaccurate, and the memory itself brought a watery grin to the pale face. His brother was in there, remembering and belting out the rest of the rap battle of Einstein and Hawking inside this strange shell that took his place. He was there. That was all that Joe needed right now, or at least something to settle for.

"Then yeah," he hiccupped lightly, scrubbing at his cheeks now with the cuffs to his hoodie sleeves, "I'm okay."

"Then can we begin?" Detective Cole broke up the moment, his green eyes twitching with impatience.

Frank shrugged, settling back onto his pillows and folding his arms over his chest. "I already told you; I don't remember anything."

The detective looked like he couldn't care any less.

"What's your name?"

The brunette rolled his eyes in annoyance, "Frank. You already told me that."

"Last name?"

"I don't know."

"Do you have any siblings?"

"I don't remember."

"Who are your parents?"

"Couldn't tell you if it'd save me."

"Who are your friends?"

"I don't remember."

"Where do you go to school?"

"I don't know."

"Who's your—?"

"I don't know!" Frank snapped, cutting him off, obviously pretty annoyed with the pestering he was receiving, "You're really starting to peeve me off. I don't remember anything! I don't even know how I got here."

That shut the detective up pretty effectively, propelling Joe from his spot on the wall, his face rid of all emotions until he had a chair spun and placed on the opposite side of his brother's bed, drawing his knees up so he could rest his elbows on his knees, meeting the confused gaze easily.

"Then let's start over, from the beginning. Back to when before you went to sleep, you had to hear a story or you'd be restless and cranky all night. Mom's not here though, so let me play her role here. Story time," the blonde energetically rubbed his hands together, ignoring the protestant glances he was getting.

All that mattered to him was that his brother wasn't protesting, more like baiting him out to go on with what it was he was slowly unfolding. Nothing could've prepared him for what was within this binder though as the first page was cracked and the story began to flow.

"My name is Joe Hardy, skipping formalities and I'm sixteen years old. I live in Bayport, Connecticut with my parents, my Aunt Trudy and my brother. We have a pet parrot named Playback who's always getting my brother and I in trouble by repeating things we said to our aunt. My mom is a librarian and my dad is a retired detective who taught us how to follow in his footsteps. That being said, my brother and I became amateur detectives in fourth grade and it became our passion, our hobby… our life.

"My brother and I, we're twins you see. Fraternal, but twins. He's a year to the day older than me. When I was in eighth grade, putting him in ninth, he came down with this… He got Shingles. Regularly, it only takes someone out for a few weeks, but it jacked with his nerves and he spent eight months at home and in the hospital fighting it. Two good sides came out of: he survived, and he was in my grade now. That made our 'crimes' a lot easier to solve and helped us to make a few more common friends.

"It continued on with us doing this, slowly working our way up the reputation chart until even cops came to us for help on some cases. One day though… well, we were nominated for an organization so under wraps that even the FBI still doesn't understand the full gist of it. It's like the FBI in a way, only it uses kids our age with out background to solve what the cops are too old and professional-looking to do, taking us all over. We've been in it since ninth grade, a good three years now, and we've made it through with nothing worse than second degree burns, fractures and a few splints.

"One day though… well, a year ago… we were sent here, to Misty Falls State Park in Idaho to investigate the disappearance of all these kids who had all previously been assumed to have been eaten by the wildlife or to have drowned before one appeared out of nowhere, wild and untamed after twelve years. We investigated the best we could… camping out in the woods… and every night we stayed out there, a new letter was added beneath our tent until the fourth night of our investigation when "L-O-S-T" was spelt at the interest.

"It was that day that my brother went missing. We… I… everyone… we all searched. We racked the earth from the top to the bottom, desperately searching for anything, but they had him and I wasn't getting him back. I never gave up though, even when my family did. I don't think I ever stopped crying. I just… I couldn't handle thinking that my big brother was gone. I know I had a family, but he was all I had left. I mean… I know I'm a guy, and I know my last name isn't ever going to change, but I'm not a Hardy Boy without him…"

Joe looked up from his knees, unaware of ever starting to cry, tensing as he felt a hand cradle his face and a comforting thumb brush the wetness away. He met the watery brown gaze above him, the furrowing eyebrows giving him just the slightest bit of hope that he had pulled the real consciousness out from wherever it had burrowed itself. He wanted it to be his brother wiping away his tears.

"I have a feeling that last bit would mean a lot more if I knew what you were talking about… but… then why aren't you still out there looking for him? You just can't give up on family," Frank murmured, holding Joe's face a second longer before pulling his hand back.

The blonde's face tightened a second before he actually started to laugh. "I didn't give up on family though… I found him. It took me over a year… but I found him. Frank Hardy, please tell me you remember your little bro."

Frank's eyes grew wide and his lips parted before he desperately searched the features of the teen beside him, biting his lip in frustration as he obviously didn't remember him. Joe was standing up now, holding his brother's hand tightly, the tears that had flowed seconds ago now burning even stronger on the verge of his eyes.

"Please… please, Frank. I… I can't lose you again. You have to remember me," he whimpered, wincing as the brunette wrapped him in a bone-crushing hug, deflating his lungs.

The blonde didn't hesitate to put his arms around his brother, jaw tightening as he tried to keep from sobbing, grabbing a fist full of the cloth that hid the considerably tanner flesh to make sure he wouldn't lose it this time. He couldn't lose his brother. He couldn't take that pain again.

"Joe, knock it off," Fenton muttered quietly with a sniffle, his tough guy shroud withering away no matter how hard his leather jacket tried to conceal the pain.

He ignored his father, biting his lip and trembling as the tears started to fall again. He felt the brunette under him still a little tense, but the same shake ran amok his flesh.

"Joe… Joe Hardy… Joseph… Hardy… Hardy… Hardy Boys… Hardy… Frank Hardy… Frank…" he heard Frank absently mutter under his breath, struggling to remember, his brow knotted hard against my pounding heart.

He was trying so desperately hard to remember, fighting that which was within his mind to unearth what he knew was buried, but it just wasn't working. He pulled back in frustration, tugging at his long locks, watching the ceiling hard.

"I feel like… I-I should know this stuff! It's all there… tip of my tongue… but it doesn't sound real… it can't be! I can't be a detective if I can't even figure out how I got here," he groaned hard, digging his heels into the weak mattress, tracing each little indent in the ceiling to where it began.

Joe straightened, turning his back to his brother and letting the sun dab at his tears out of the strain that kept his arms planted at his side.

"Yes you can… you were the smarter out of the two of us… and I'm not sure how you got here either… I was always the body guard. I was supposed to protect you… I know I'm the little brother, but you never judged me by that… we were twins and you treated it like just an hour put us off… I was supposed to save you. It's my fault you can't remember. You would've found me in a week if it was me that had gone…" he started to walk off when Frank sat up and grabbed for his arm, grabbing his bicep instead.

The blonde winced, drawing back and rubbing at his arm but turning to see why his brother had grabbed him. Frank's expression changed completely though, a small little hinted smile pressing to his lips.

"Joe… has the… the cut from the bear healed up at all?" he asked quietly, drawing out the biggest grin that had ever split his brother's face.

"You remembered…" Joe whispered, eyes lighting up like the star to the top of the town's tree on Christmas Eve, the bells of the church chiming their hardest while the snowflakes rain down in celebration.

Frank beamed proudly, the room envisioning a golden medallion staining his chest from his expression, turning so he was facing the room again.

"Alright, the Hardy Boys have a new mission: we have to figure out where I was in that year. Let's start out with what we know. There was the word LOST outside our tent and… I… I think… I remember being hit. That could have something to do with it, right?"

Joe seemed to glow there, gripping the bars of the cage, the detective leaning in too. And it was just like that that the teen without memories slowly began his metamorphosis back into Frank Hardy, the lost brother that was now on his way to being found.

* * *

**[1] This was a reference to Epic Rap Battles of History: Albert Einstein vs Stephen Hawking. I figure that Frank and Joe would be the kind of boys to watch that kind of stuff...  
**

**I know this probably wasn't too good… I'm actually really scared to post this… but I love the Hardy Boys so this is for them.**

**-F.J. III**


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